Terminator and Philosophy: I’ll Be Back, Therefore I Am

305 Pages·2009·1.71 MB·English

by  William Irwin

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T E R M I N A T O R

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T E R M I N A T O R
A N D
P H I L O S O P H Y
I ' L L B E B A C K ,
T H E R E F O R E I A M
Edited by Richard Brown and
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John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Copyright © 2009 by John Wiley & Sons. All rights reserved
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CONTENTS
Introduction: The Rise of the Philosophers 1
PART ONE
LIFE AFTER HUMANITY AND ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE
1 The Terminator Wins: Is the Extinction
of the Human Race the End of People, or
Just the Beginning? 7
Greg Littmann
2 True Man or Tin Man? How Descartes
and Sarah Connor Tell a Man from a Machine 21
George A. Dunn
3 It Stands to Reason: Skynet and Self-Preservation 39
Josh Weisberg
4 Un-Terminated: The Integration of the Machines 52
Jesse W. Butler
PART TWO
WOMEN AND REVOLUTIONARIES
5 “I Know Now Why You Cry”: Terminator 2, Moral
Philosophy, and Feminism 69
Harry Chotiner
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vi CONTENTS
6 Sarah Connor’s Stain 82
Jennifer Culver
7 James Cameron’s Marxist Revolution 93
Jeffrey Ewing
PART THREE
CHANGING WHAT’S ALREADY HAPPENED
8 Bad Timing: The Metaphysics of the Terminator 109
Robert A. Delfi no and Kenneth Sheahan
9 Time for the Terminator: Philosophical
Themes of the Resistance 122
Justin Leiber
10 Changing the Future: Fate and the Terminator 133
Kristie Lynn Miller
11 Judgment Day Is Inevitable: Hegel and the
Futility of Trying to Change History 146
Jason P. Blahuta
PART FOUR
THE ETHICS OF TERMINATION
12 What’s So Terrible about Judgment Day? 161
Wayne Yuen
13 The War to End All Wars? Killing
Your Defense System 175
Phillip Seng
14 Self-Termination: Suicide, Self-Sacrifi ce,
and the Terminator 190
Daniel P. Malloy
15 What’s So Bad about Being Terminated? 202
Jason T. Eberl
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CONTENTS vii
16 Should John Connor Save the World? 218
Peter S. Fosl
PART FIVE
BEYOND THE NEURAL NET
17 “You Gotta Listen to How People Talk”:
Machines and Natural Language 239
Jacob Berger and Kyle Ferguson
18 Terminating Ambiguity: The Perplexing
Case of “The” 253
Richard Brown
19 Wittgenstein and What’s Inside the
Terminator’s Head 266
Antti Kuusela
CONTRIBUTORS: Future Leaders of the Resistance 279
INDEX: Skynet’s Database 287
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